The church that aligns itself with God's Word and focuses on reproducing the image and character of Christ through its body of believers will always prevail. The church that focuses on interpreting scripture to be practical and relevant to the masses, even with the best of intentions, and using the tools of marketing to attract a crowd, will ultimately fail. The reasons for this are simple: God commands us to align with His Word. His means and methods are sure and strong and have not changed through the ages, and God never promises to bless our intentions, only His plan.

The North American evangelical church movement has largely embraced marketing as a key element in its growth strategy. Marketing has no business in the church. Let me be clear when I say this, because although in Communications Ministry we use many of the tools of marketing--print media, video, websites, blogs, displays, press releases, etc.--the foundational elements of the typical marketing strategy simply do not translate to the core purpose for which the church was founded, nor the commands and clear direction laid out for the church in the New Testament.

Many will take issue with these statements. Yet we can already see the result of marketing strategy in the North American evangelical church. We have bigger and bigger congregations of largely nominal believers. They come to a place called the church to share an experience that they evaluate against their own needs and desires as a part of their lives. Their commitment is shallow, their Bible knowledge is spotty and theologically unsound, and the teaching they receive is aimed at improving their already-in-the-top-5%-of-the-world lives versus calling them to sacrifice their lives to a larger purpose. I've been from Acts to Revelation, and this is not a picture of the church God intended.

I call this current breed of the North American church "market driven." We have embraced a hybrid kind of church that mixes New Testament faith with the latest trends in marketing under the mantra of "the message never changes but the methods must change." It is a statement I myself have uttered many times in the past. Unfortunately it is not true. Neither the means nor the methods involved in being the church in today's world have changed from their first-century roots.  That statement has led us to a kind of church that looks quite a bit more like the world than its ancient predecessors.

Market-driven churches tend to be campus-centric. The market-driven church, because it attempts to bring people to a place for worship and ministry, often focuses on its campus as the primary center for activity. Much of the effort and resources of the church are focused on the campus, and even multiple campuses. Though our talk is often about being "in the world" and interacting with our communities, campus-centric ministries are most often about providing an alternative to the world.

Alternative sports programs, alternative music, alternative entertainment, even alternative coffee bars, alternative bookstores, alternative preschool and children’s activities--and the list goes on.  Instead of pushing believers into the world to influence, say, a community sports program, we will build a gym and invite the community to come to our church to experience our brand of Christian sports.

The fallacy of this strategy is that while it may appear outwardly sucessful the church becomes known primarily as a place, versus a people. If you were to ask someone where you church is located, would the response be an address, or "our church is located everywhere in our community because our people are everywhere?" Even multi-campus churches can fall into the campus-centric mold when they do nothing to foster the ministries of the church outside their multiple physical locations.

Market-driven churches tend to focus on the quality of the experience. A market-driven church's campus-centric design means the hours spent at the church building become very important. Work often centers on maximizing the quality of the experience. Great sound and lighting and video, comfortable seating, ample wayfinding, tightly integrated programming in multiple media.

Now, none of these things are bad in-and-of themselves. I'm for all of them in moderation and we look for ways to maximize these things in our own congregation. But we must realize that the quality of the "church experience"--typically the weekend services and activities--are really not a good benchmark to gauge the effectiveness of the church.

We often talk about the fact that we don't want to judge ourselves on "how many people are coming, but rather on how many people we are sending out into the world." Yet our whole system of operation often focuses on managing those who are coming, and paying nominal if any attention to those we are sending out. We cannot allow the quality of the experience on the weekends be our driver for evaluation. Instead, we must evaluate how effective we are at sending people into the world.

Market-driven churches have no influence in the world. If a market-driven church were to disappear from the face of the earth today, the question is, who would really miss it? When Christ commands believers to "make disciples of all nations," He is linking every believer to a mission that is both local and global in nature. Market-driven churches will most often push world influence into a small corner called "missions" which is promoted as the life calling of a zealous few. The result is churches who may have some influence in their own communities, but little if any influence in the world.

Believers in these churches think they are making a difference in the world, but little knowledge of the world in terms of geography, politics or events. Worse, we have equated world involvement to a check we might write once a year for a missions offering. The Word is clear--we are to impact the nations, each and every one of us. Very few, if any, market-driven church have any real influence in the world for one reason--their resources (money, people) are going into their "primary market," which is their own backyard. Would you church be willing to sacrifice a third of its budget to worldwide efforts knowing you'd never see the results on your own campus, and it may even lead to sacrificing needs on your own campus?

Market-driven churches accept nominal commitment to vague ideals. Nominal commitment is a tremendous problem in the North American evangelical church. The New Testament calls believers to a radical Christ-centered life that looks nothing like the world. The market-driven church not only conforms to a worldly image primarily by teaching in a response mode to world-driven problems. Our culture is divorced, in debt and unhappy, so the church's response is to teach on family values, managing money and finding fulfillment.

What that does is set up the church to be a life-improvement facility. Again, this does not align with Scripture, which is calling us to a deeply sacrificial and Christ-centered life, one which will not run at the first sign of trouble. Did you ever wonder why Jesus did not say to take up our Cadiallac Escalades and follow Him? He constantly warned us of persecution, told us the world would hate us and hate Him and hate His Word. So the question becomes, are we primarily trying to meet people's needs or fulfill the mission of Christ in the church? The answer is a both-and approach--yes, we want to love people and meet them where they are. At the same time, we do not exist primarily to meet their needs, but to engage them to sacrifice their lives to meet Christ's mission for His church.

A market-driven church's message is devoid of this level of commitment, because it doesn't play well in Peoria. Worse, we can often come up with value and vision statements that, in an effort to attract an audience, seek to raise up the level of importance of the believer in the whole equation at the detriment to raising up Christ. We will talk about excellence, inclusiveness, teamwork, peacemaking, forgiveness--all in the guise of being more Christlike--but the reason behind this is often to get buy-in from the audience versus align ourselves to Christ. The test for your mission statement: if people in this country were being killed for their faith in Christ (that's reality in about 60 nations around the world, by the way), would your congregation's commitment to the church hold up?

Market-driven churches tend to be personality-driven. Campus-centric design also dictates that the church has a "draw" for weekend services. The largest churches are known for their preachers and teachers. I have worked at a large churches and this is a tremendous challenge for them. The danger in personality-driven churches is that the teacher becomes an "endorser" much like a celebrity spokesperson. We like him and so we buy into the message because of our favorable response to an individual. It eventually makes what the teacher says about the Word of God more important than the Word of God.

Don't believe me? Okay, take any "name" you want to in the North American church who is leading a large congregation. Now, tell me about the core ministry philosophy of that church apart from the leader. Or here's an even harder exercise: take any large church's "mission statement" and back it up with scripture. You're gonna say, "That's not really a fair question." Well, it's a tough one and I daresay one that we need to be asking if we are truly about pointing people to the Word and to Christ versus our own agendas.

Market-driven churches ultimately will not survive. Sadly, though the era of the mega-church is upon us and we see some very large crowds walking into these buildings, they only remind me that we are repeating the mistakes of the continent to our east. Europe’s cathedrals are the worship centers of the last two centuries, and they now stand empty and completely ineffective at reaching that continent for Christ.

They serve as a powerful reminder of our future. The last 200 years saw the greatest thrust in construction of these mega-churches of the past as smaller village congregations "consolidated" into these beautiful campus-centric cathedrals, built at great cost. In fact, in many cases the cost was so great that the church resorted to selling alms to cover the cost--they sacrificed their commitment to the Word of God and sold "forgiveness" of sins in order to get their buildings completed.

Once the catherals were done, the church and its leaders spent most of their time inside them, admiring the workmanship. Outside, the needs of the world grew and literally passed them by. By the early 1900s the church is Europe was stagnent, ineffective and dying.

I have never served a church that sat less than 1,800 people its worship center. I pray we do not repeat the mistakes of the last two centuries. I pray we are not to be found sitting in our cathedrals of sound, lighting and video systems and children's play areas, segregating ourselves from the very world we say we want to reach. I pray that our church will be among the ones that shed the market-driven philosophies of the last 20 years and re-embrace the Christ of the cross. I pray that we will be a church where people will not remember our name, or our slogan or logo, or even where exactly we are located. I do pray that people will remember us only because they remember what Christ has done through us, and that all the credit will be His and not ours.

About the Author. Eugene L. Mason has more than two decades of experience in ministry communications and technologies. More...